Edit: This is still the best way to load rpm packages. Some links no longer work.
Originally posted April 25, 2017 on AIXchange
When it comes to getting open source packages onto your AIX system, there are lots of options. And while package dependencies are always a problem, Michael Perzl’s solution is still sound.
But now there’s another way to handle rpms and dependencies on your AIX machine: YUM. YUM was covered in detail in the December AIX Virtual User Group meeting. I encourage you to listen to the replay and learn more.
Here are some notes from the presentation.
From slide 3:
YUM (Yellowdog Updater, Modified) is an open source command line package management utility for RPM packages.
• YUM is a tool for installing, removing, querying, and managing RPM packages.
• YUM automatically determines dependencies for the packages getting updated/installed thus fetches the dependent packages and installs them with the packages.
• YUM works with an existing software repository that contains RPM packages. The YUM repository can be local or over network.
From slide 4:
YUM on AIX – Before and After
• Before YUM
o Difficult to navigate package dependencies.
o Often must manually determine dependencies, one by one.
o Manually check from toolbox/repository if a package or a new version of package is available.
• After YUM
o YUM automatically consults a dependency database and downloads the dependent packages you need.
o YUM can list all the packages available on the repository.
o Using ‘yum check-update’ one can find if new versions of installed packages are available and can use ‘yum update <package>’ to update it.
Note : YUM doesn’t recognize installp dependencies. For example OpenSSL libraries are provided by AIX in installp format, so if an RPM that depends on OpenSSL then user should make sure to keep his OpenSSL image current.Slide 6 points to this easy to follow document on installing YUM on AIX. Follow along as I share my own experience with getting YUM working.
To get started, I went here and grabbed the rpm.file, which I copied to my machine.
Then I went here for the yum_bundle_v1.tar file, and copied that over.
I installed rpm.rte using smitty. There were no issues. Then I installed the yum_bundle_v1.tar by first untarring it:
I ran this to complete the installation:
At this point I had these rpm files loaded on my systems:
# rpm -qa
expect-5.42.1-3.ppc
tk-8.4.7-3.ppc
readline-6.1-2.ppc
gettext-0.10.40-8.ppc
yum-metadata-parser-1.1.4-1.ppc
db-4.8.24-3.ppc
pysqlite-1.1.7-1.ppc
curl-7.44.0-1.ppc
python-urlgrabber-3.10.1-1.noarch
python-devel-2.7.10-1.ppc
tcl-8.4.7-3.ppc
AIX-rpm-7.2.1.0-2.ppc
sqlite-3.7.15.2-2.ppc
glib2-2.14.6-2.ppc
gdbm-1.8.3-5.ppc
python-2.7.10-1.ppc
python-iniparse-0.4-1.noarch
python-pycurl-7.19.3-1.ppc
yum-3.4.3-3.noarch
python-tools-2.7.10-1.ppc
I went ahead and edited my yum.conf as stated in the instructions. Then I just ran “yum install wget” and saw:
I was able to run yum update and it went ahead and updated my rpm packages as well.
Were you aware of this capability? Have you had any issues with it?